I have already written about the pressures to be sexy and desirable at all times, so let’s look at a different angle. What is it about costumes that invites people’s sexy out? What is it about Halloween that gives people free rein to set aside their respectable straight laced (and I don’t mean a corset) personas?

Halloween allows, no, embraces, the taboo. It is a time to show the shadow, the normally unacceptable and so it frees us to push the edge a bit. It is ok to be over the top on this night without expecting to be judged. It is not “real” so it is all ok.

And that I think is a key to why this side of people comes to the surface on Halloween. It is a safe time to let it show without having to take it seriously. The play aspect of costumes allows a risk-taking that is good for us. We can bring out a fantasy or a previously hidden persona within us without the worry that we will be rejected – because it is only in play! We set down the burden of having to process - is it ok for me to express this, to like this, to want to be seen this way? We are not asking our partner to incorporate this into our sex lives from now on or to change their image of who we are. It’s just for tonight. Oh, and everyone else is doing it too.

I wish we gave ourselves permission to play like this more often. Why reserve one might a year for experimenting with sexual expression? What if you and your partner agreed to not take things too seriously, to show up in ways that are silly or risky or possibly over the top? Like on Halloween, in the privacy of your bedroom no one should misinterpret you as saying you want to behave like this in every setting. And like Halloween costumes, there are thousands upon thousands of ways to express yourself. You can just try them on and see how it feels. What if we didn’t have to be embarrassed about wanting to step outside of our day to day roles and rules and share something different with our sexual playmates?

Horror stories, whether told around a campfire, in a theater, or streamed on a laptop, reflect our fears back to us. They are the stories we tell ourselves to process the dark, the shadow, the things we can’t fully comprehend. Themes change based on generational fears and concerns so that, believe it not for you non-fans, horror can provide social commentary. And often, they show us depictions of our fears about sexuality.

Of all the monsters we return to again and again, vampires speak to us about sexuality more directly than any other. They are depicted as seductive, killing in close physical contact, piercing a highly sensitive part of our body, coming in to our bedrooms at night. Often when they attack the biting process looks a lot like ecstasy rather than suffering. That’s a lot of sexy for a monster.

But they are fearful. Vampires have been in folktales for centuries. They had a wave of popularity in the late 1800s, bringing in metaphors of epidemic disease as well as the fears of being sexually seduced and all the consequences that can come from that. A large part of the fear came from depictions of women becoming sexually aggressive, predators seeking blood or life energy. Sure, the 1920s Nosferatu was not a sexy guy, but seeing him hover over sleeping women in the beds barely touching them was actually pretty titillating for movies at that time.

In the 1950s and 1960s vampires got more debonair. They were elegant and cultured but cold. Themes of being seduced and used, your humanity taken from you, became dominant. Vampires represented the foreigner, the draw of the mysterious, more dangerous than you imagine. They were amoral, perverse.

In the 1970s we saw a series of funny vampires, taking the seriousness and fear out of the image. Only squares would admit to sexual fears so we can laugh at them. But even then, the overt sexuality was seen as something laughable. Perhaps revealing our fears of being embarrassed, afraid of being seen as a caricature, our sexually overwhelming everything else.

The 80s and 90s gave us a series of sexy but lonely vampires. Truly the outsider, these vampires craved connection, they were ready for intimacy but kept from it by their monstrous nature. We saw things from these vampires perspectives and were meant to feel sympathy for them. These stories speak to fears of empty sex and the fear of feeling disconnected. Also the fear of being a danger to others was present and may have tapped into the AIDs crisis at that time.

And recently? The success of the Twilight series suggests we still have some sexual fears to sort through. With passion and obsession being firmly entwined, the seductive vampire in these stories must hold himself back for fear his passion will harm his weaker partner. Sex is a path to losing control and devouring or being devoured. Love is repressing your urges for as long as you can. Dangerous stuff. And I am not just talking about the vampires.

So what depictions of vampires will we see next? What are we afraid our sexuality will do to us? No matter what, I trust that vampires will continue to play our sexual shadow for us throughout their eternal lives.

Hands running up and down the slopes of bodies, thighs touching, torsos pressing into each other….Touch is the sense most commonly linked to sexuality. We touch and are touched. For some of us, sexual interactions are the main, or only, time we engage in extended touch with another person.

When we talk of touch in sex, we often hear about ways to touch another person. Often the advice centers around finding the “right” places to touch. Maybe there will be some input on whether to touch lightly there or firmly. We also hear about how to receive touch, how to relax and experience the sensation of someone else, hopefully, pleasing you.

I am going to invite another aspect of enjoying touch – the ability to track sensation and take pleasure in the act of touching itself. What do I mean by this? We can touch in such a way that touching turns us on. Try it now with yourself; use your hand to touch your opposite arm. Close your eyes and notice what your hand is feeling, heat, softness of skin, crinkly quality of hair. Now slowly move your hand and feel sensation under your fingertips, different than the sensation under your palm. Now you are engaging in the act of touching.

It is harder to focus on this when you touch yourself because, as you probably noticed, the sensation in your arm being touched is pretty distracting too. That is not a bad thing! Let’s have pleasure from multiple channels. With a partner though, it can be a fun practice to experiment with touching for your own sensation of pleasure. Rather than focusing on tweaking spot A, then brushing spot B, then vigorously rubbing spot C, in hopes that this will feel good to your partner, try something different and touch according to what feels good underneath your hands. It helps to close your eyes at first so that you can focus on what you feel. Then slowly explore.

Engaging in this way you may find that you love parts of your partner’s body that you didn’t appreciate before. You may get aroused by slickness, folds and hills, roughness tingling against tender fingertips, warm hidden spots. Think of your own hands as erotic zones in their own right. They are just as sensitive as nearly anywhere you are going to be touched.

There is a great likelihood that your partner is going to like this too. Slow sensual touch from someone who is enjoying themselves is a pretty big turn on. This practice is not to replace the other ways of engaging with touch; take time to give purposeful touches and to receive. This opens up a new way to explore and enjoy sexual play and new channels for pleasure.

Melissa Fritchle is the author of The Conscious Sexual Self Workbook and a Holistic Psychotherapist, licensed in California as a Marriage and Family Therapist (Lic#48627). She has a private practice specializing in Sex Therapy and Couples Therapy. She travels far and wide, internationally and on the internet, to spread compassionate, sex positive, diverse, realistic sex education.